Floating Brains
Please find our guests for this series by alphabetic order by surname
Andy Bagshaw
Dr Bagshaw’s main interest is in developing and applying non-invasive neuroimaging methods to questions in clinical and behavioural neuroscience. Current work in the Multimodal Integration Group (MIG) focuses on using EEG-fMRI to understand the influence of ongoing brain activity on evoked and behavioural responses, and to examine the localisation and functional significance of electrophysiological discharges in epilepsy and sleep. The group is also working on methods to combine structural and functional brain networks in order to shed light on how sleep and epilepsy affect the brain.
Sarah Beck
My research examines children’s and adults’ thinking about time and knowledge. I am interested in how children become able to speculate about events in the past and future and how they handle uncertainty, and how adults’ apparently sophisticated thinking in these areas is often irrational.
Jackie Chappell
Dr Chappell is an expert in the field of animal cognition, and is involved in interdisciplinary research and teaching between the fields of biology, psychology and computer science.
Olivier Codol
Olivier is undertaking doctoral research into motor learning and motor adaptation to investigate the role of reinforcement learning in this context. Currently he is looking at the interaction between implicit cerebellar and explicit prefrontal reinforcement processes.
Stephane De Brito
Dr De Brito is a psychologist and director of the Social, Cognitive, Affective, and Neuroscience (SCAN) lab. Research in the SCAN lab focuses on understanding the mechanistic interplay between the social, cognitive, affective, and neurocognitive factors implicated in the development and persistence of antisocial and aggressive behaviour. A second strand of research examines those aspects among youths who have experienced early adversity.
Joseph Galea
Personal website: www.josephgalea.weebly.com
Dr Galea is broadly interested in motor control. This ranges from the neural correlates of motor learning to stroke rehabilitation. At present, he is particularly interested in how reward/punishment influences our actions and can be used to alter the speed at which our motor system learns or retains new movements.
Suzanne Higgs
I am a researcher interested in the psychology of eating. In particular, I am interested in the role that learning and memory processes play in decisions we make about what and how much to eat.
My research is focused on the role of cognitions such as learning, memory and attention in eating behaviour and the biological mechanisms that underpin these processes. In our group we assess emotional and cognitive responses to foods in adults and children, using both behavioural and brain imaging techniques. We ask questions about how memory for recently consumed foods affects decisions about future food intake and the factors that determine remembered liking for foods. We are interested in the role of working memory in appetite processes and how social context influences what we choose to eat. This work has been funded by the ESRC, BBSRC, Leverhulme Trust, MRC and Alcohol Education Research Council.
Joff Lee
I am a behavioural neuroscientist primarily interested in the mechanisms and functions of memory processes. In particular, I currently study the phenomenon of memory reconsolidation, which may have applications in the understanding of and treatment of conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and drug addiction.
Stephen Mayhew
Dr Steve Mayhew conducts a lot of simultaneous EEG-fMRI experiments in an effort to better understand the coupling between single-trial variability in electrophysiological and haemodynamic measurements of brain responses, and how interactions between ongoing brain processes and external events are intrinsic to the function of the brain.
Damien Neadle
I have been employed as a research assistant in Julie Christian’s lab, at the University of Birmingham, since the onset of my Masters degree. This lab focuses mainly on social research; work here has allowed me to develop a more rounded academic skill set and to gain experience in more varied statistical techniques.